Celtic stun Downs to reach MTN8 semi-final

Barely a month after Sundowns beat Celtic 1-0 in the final of the Nedbank Cup, a 69th-minute goal by Victor Letsoalo ensured Phunya Sele Sele advanced to the semi-finals.

Celtic coach John Maduka said that they are delighted to reach the last four of the cup competition, but warned that they have to focus on taking it one game at a time.

“We're taking it one game at a time, not easy games coming ahead of us but we believe if we take it one game at a time we'll be able to get there so we can't talk about winning the cup before we get past the semi-final.

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“We knew that Sundowns is a very good team, they will try to take the game to us, very comfortable on the ball, offensively they're a team that attacks you, attacks you.

“What we did was to allow them to have the ball, we drop a bit so that we can be able to use the space behind their defence and we defended well, that's one thing we wanted to make sure of, make sure that we defend well. If we defend well, we knew that at the end of the day we'll be able to win the game.

“The first half where we were losing it is that we couldn't keep the ball a little bit longer in the final third and as a result, we ended up getting frustrated, immediately our wing-backs go so support the strikers you find that our strikers don't keep the ball well, we lose the ball.

“So we tried to tell them that let's try to keep the ball a little bit longer and let's try to keep the ball a little bit longer in their half, we knew that if we're able to do that, we were waiting for that moment and that moment came and we got the goal.”

The first leg of the semi-final will see a Soweto derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs at the Orlando Stadium, while SuperSport United with host Bloemfontein at the Lucas Moripe Stadium.

The semi-finals will be played during the last weekend of October and the first weekend in November.